In the first agreement to come out of the WSIS, the United States has kept control of ICANN. At least that is what has been reported so far, there was never really any doubt that the U.S. would keep their control.
For those unfamiliar with this institution, ICANN “is responsible for managing and coordinating the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names.” It is an American corporation controlled in part by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Lately there have been considerable criticisms about this control, particularly after ICANN rejected the .xxx domain name by a veto from the DoC, prompted by American religious conservatives that oppose the existence of a porn domain. Lula DaSilva, the president of Brazil, went as far as to say that “Brazil, China, Russia, India and Venezuela, amongst other countries, challenge the complete dominion exercised by the United States over the Internet, and they proposed an inter-governmental body that will exercise that control.“
But now the WSIS has “allowed” ICANN to remain, but there will be yet another toothless international over-seeing forum for internet governance.
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